This is the second conference of the 3-G Network’s Celebration of the Guyanas, a gathering of scholars, authors, and activists, commemorating 40 years of Independence of the Republic of Suriname, 50 years of Independence of Guyana, and 70 years of the declaration of la Guyane as a French Département d’Outre-Mer. These countries are rarely focused upon together yet they are historically and culturally linked.

This conference seeks to engage the landscapes of memory as they are intertwined with the politics and ecologies of place and movement. These areas (French Guyane, Guyana, and Suriname) have been scarred by colonization and ethnic violence, their resources have been plundered, enormous political and ecological disasters have resulted. How are the changes within the ecological-scape articulated in the different communities that have been transported, or migrated, to and from one of these countries? How do the landscape disasters and environmental damages affect the different communities that compose the population in these 3-G countries? How do the different ethnic, religious, and political, communities resist these calamities and re-organize? What strategies of resilience and agency are being implemented locally and/or transnationally? How are these histories remembered, represented, imagined, and re-imagined in the memories and present realities of the peoples and communities living in these countries and the diaspora?

We are interested in these histories of multiple sedimentation. We welcome examinations of literature, comparisons of artistic expression, investigations of anthropological discoveries, as well as analysis of political, historical and literary accounts, that concentrate on the commonalities and distinctions within the lived and imagined experiences of the three Guyanas.

For this conference, the convenors welcome research-based papers, as well as performances engaged around our theme of Imagining the Guyanas / Ecologies of Memory and Movement. All methodological and theoretical approaches are welcomed. Also, we embrace creative interventions suggesting fresh topics in new media multimodalities. Cultural events will be organized in the evening with invited writers and artists. Submit your proposal by January 15, 2016, through this https://ecotones.submittable.com/submit/46609. Your proposal should include Name, Title of Paper/Presentation including a suggested theme, a 250-word Description, and a short Biography with Contact information (150 words).

In the continuity of the first conference on the series ‘The Pan-Guyanese Highway: Cayenne-Georgetown-Paramaribo’ in Amsterdam (October 1-3, 2015), and of this conference in London, a symposium entitled Imagining the Guyanas / Across the Disciplines, will conclude the series in Montpellier (November 3-5, 2016). It is possible to submit two different proposals for the two events provided they respond to the specificities of each call for paper.

Local Organizing Committee: School of Advanced Studies, University of London

Confirmed Keynotes:William Marshall, University of StirlingCharles Forsdick, University of Liverpool

Special Guests:Alissa Trotz (University of Toronto) and Didier Vincent (President of KANDJOKAN France)

Invited Writer: Pauline Melville

CFP: Imagining the Guyanas / Across the DisciplinesExtended deadline: 03/06/2016

This is the third and final academic event of the 3-G Network’s Celebration of the Guyanas, a gathering of scholars, authors, and activists, commemorating 40 years of Independence of the Republic of Suriname, 50 years of Independence of Guyana, and 70 years of the declaration of la Guyane as a French Département d’Outre-Mer. These countries are rarely focused upon together yet they are historically and culturally linked if linguistically, politically and socially different.

After the launching conference ‘The Pan-Guyanese Highway: Cayenne-Georgetown-Paramaribo’ in Amsterdam (October 1-3, 2015), and the second conference ’Imagining the Guyanas – Ecologies of Memory and Movement’ in London (October 27-29, 2016), this concluding symposium in Montpellier seeks to engage the theoretical and methodological challenges of the study of symbolic, social and physical ecotones in the Caribbean. Ecotones are understood as total realities, an assemblage of natural, political, cultural and temporal dynamics. Gathering scholars from the social sciences and humanities, the aim is to confront, and create a dialogue between, different disciplinary perspectives to revisit the main themes that have undergirded the Ecotone project: transnationalism and place making, encounters and hybridity, reinvention of memories, ecological discontinuities and environmental hazards. French Guyane, Guyana, and Suriname are key places of observations of such processes. They are three contexts marked by slavery and decolonization struggles, deforestation and resource spoliation, but also immigration and diasporisation, cultural and artistic production and economic competition. The Caribbean in general, and the Guyanas in particular, are taken between a colonial past that created them and their inscription into global connections and power flows.

We are interested in creating a cross-disciplinary dialogue. We welcome papers of social scientists incorporating artistic material and humanities scholars engaging with contemporary conceptual and methodological debates that cross disciplines. What definitions of ecotones arise from existing approaches? Seen from the Caribbean, how does contemporary neoliberal globalization compare with and shift from the modern time imperial globalization? How can a focus on the Guyanas favor a clearer understanding of the issues at stake in the Caribbean as a whole, and possibly elsewhere? How can it provide a laboratory for a cross-disciplinary sharing of ideas and visions for the future?

For this conference, the convenors welcome research-based papers around our theme of Imagining the Guyanas / Across the Disciplines. Approaches with a focus on methodology and cross-disciplinarity are strongly encouraged. Submit your proposal by January 15, 2016, through this https://ecotones.submittable.com/submit/46610. Your proposal should include Name, Title of Paper/Presentation including a suggested theme, a 250-word Description, and a short Biography with Contact information (150 words).

The second conference, entitled Imagining the Guyanas / Ecologies of Memory and Movement, will take place in London a few days before (October 27-29, 2016). It is possible to submit two different proposals for the two events provided they respond to the specificities of each call for paper.

In the on-going process of tracing historical ties and redefining Caribbean contemporary identities, the search for new imaginations and new modes of communication has taken a broad flight. Mass media play a remarkable role in the process. Oral traditions on the verge of extinction find new means of expression by spoken-word and digital artists, and in the use of social media. More and more films, documentaries and television programs are produced on the Caribbean but also in the Caribbean. Important contributions have been made in fictional prose and popular fiction too.In the context of an increased emphasis on transcolonial relations, one will note that many of these productions still depend on western funding and distribution, but a local industry of smaller productions has arisen as well and challenges traditional perspectives on gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and post-colonialism. In parallel, interdisciplinary research has documented the ways mobility, historical memory and hybridity have nourished contemporary Caribbean identities.

The co-convenors of the conference bring the attention on the possible, or impossible, avenues of communication between the three Guyanas (French Guyane, Guyana, Suriname), a set of countries rarely focused upon for their commonalities and / or discrepancies. If trans-Atlantic and North-South relations are elaborated more than inter-Caribbean relations, what is the situation regarding French Guyane, Guyana and Suriname? What are the socio-economic conditions supporting, or hindering, their relations? What are the modalities of this dialogue and what does it tell us about the Caribbean as a whole? Why are the literatures of those three separate, yet historically and culturally linked regions so poorly represented in the respective “canons” of postcolonial and post-nationalist literature?

We invite submissions for abstracts of research-based papers on all issues related to the three Guyanas and their interaction(s), and the above mentioned matters on the crossroad of communication, media, transmission, the arts and literature. We especially welcome papers focusing on the relationships and interchange between the three Guyanas and the circulation of ideas, people and materials on the Guyanese shield, rather than the traditional relations between colonizer and colonized. Cross-cultural and inter-disciplinary approaches are very much welcomed as well as contributions from anthropological, media and theatre studies.

We invite scholars for a 20-minute presentation of their papers, followed by discussion time. Proposals should be sent to the four members of the organizing committee by January 5, 2015. Notification of acceptance will be given by March 1, 2015. A selection of papers will be considered for publication.

The Amsterdam conference is part of a series of three events, The 3-G Network, that will be hosted by three different institutions (University of Amsterdam on October 1-3, 2015; Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3, November 3-5, 2016; University of London, School of Advanced Study (October 27-29, 2016). Separate calls for papers will be issued eventually for the events in Montpellier and London.

The 3-G Network will be part of the celebration of 40 years of Independence of the Republic of Suriname, 50 years of Independence of Guyana and (at the eve of) the 70 years of the declaration of la Guyane as a French Département d’Outre-Mer (1946).

The 3-G Network is itself part of a wider program, Ecotones, which is co-convened by EMMA (Montpellier 3), Coastal Carolina University and MIGRINTER (UMR CNRS-Poitiers).